Case-sensitive Settings on Windows

• I was trying to clone the Linux git stable repository on my Windows 10 machine using the following command:

  git clone https://git.kernel.org/pub/scm/linux/kernel/git/stable/linux.git --depth 1
  

• Unfortunately, this failed with the following warning because the Linux tree contains files with the same name but with different case sensitivity:

  warning: the following paths have collided (e.g. case-sensitive paths
  on a case-insensitive filesystem) and only one from the same
  colliding group is in the working tree:
  ...
  

• The Windows 10 file system by default is case-insensitive, meaning it treats both ip6t_hl.h and ip6t_HL.h as the same file. This is not true for Linux file systems, as they treat these as different files because the file system is case-sensitive.

• This problem can be solved in two ways:

  • We can use WSL (Windows Subsystem for Linux) on our Windows machine.
  • We can enable case sensitivity for a folder using the fsutil command:

    fsutil file setCaseSensitiveInfo "<path-to-directory>" enable
    

    • You can verify if this worked using the following command:

      fsutil.exe file queryCaseSensitiveInfo "<path-to-directory>"
      

References

• Stack Overflow: Case-sensitive path collisions

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